Bill Cosby's civil trial on sexual assault allegations begins
Bill Cosby sexual assault civil trial begins in California as woman, 64, claims ‘he forced her to perform sex acts when she was a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in 1975’
- Judy Huth, 64, sued Cosby in 2014, alleging that he brought her to the Playboy Mansion and forced her to perform a sex act around 1975, when she was 16
- She is seeking unspecified damages for sexual battery and emotional distress
- In her lawsuit, Huth said she and a friend met Cosby at a film set at a park
- Huth said Cosby invited the girls to meet him the following week, when he made Huth drink beer and molested her on a bed at the Los Angeles mansion
Bill Cosby’s latest sex assault civil trial will begin Wednesday following a Los Angeles woman’s 2014 lawsuit claiming the disgraced comedian molested her when she was a teenager in the 1970s.
Judy Huth, 64, sued Cosby alleging that the former actor brought her to the Playboy Mansion and forced her to perform a sex act around 1975, when she was 16.
She is seeking unspecified damages for sexual battery and emotional distress.
In her lawsuit, Huth said she and a friend met Cosby at a film set at a park. She said Cosby invited the girls to meet him the following week, when he made Huth drink beer and molested her on a bed at the Los Angeles mansion.
The former actor will not attend the Santa Monica trial. Cosby’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said, ‘We are confident that the evidence will discredit Plaintiff´s 50-year-old allegation.’
Another lawyer for Cosby confirmed he would not be present on Wednesday. His representatives say glaucoma has left him blind and made travel too difficult.
Gloria Allred, who represents Huth and has also handled several Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, said her client will not comment on the case.
Cosby, 84, is best known for his role as the lovable husband and father in the 1980s television comedy series ‘The Cosby Show,’ earning him the nickname ‘America’s Dad.’
His family-friendly reputation was shattered after more than 50 women accused him of multiple sexual assaults over nearly five decades.
Judy Huth (left), 64, sued Cosby in 2014, alleging that the former actor brought her to the Playboy Mansion and forced her to perform a sex act around 1975, when she was 16
In her lawsuit, Huth (above, left) said she and a friend met Cosby at a film set at a park. She said Cosby invited the girls to meet him the following week, when he made Huth drink beer and molested her on a bed at the Los Angeles mansion
Cosby’s reputation was shattered after more than 50 women accused him of multiple sexual assaults over nearly five decades. Above, Cosby is welcomed outside his home after Pennsylvania’s highest court overturned his sexual assault conviction and ordered him released from prison immediately on June 30, 2021
Cosby’s attorneys, who say no sexual abuse happened, are likely to emphasize that the burden of proving the nearly 50-year-old case lies entirely with the plaintiffs. They have acknowledged that Cosby took Huth to the Playboy Mansion, as a photo from the visit shows, but say they believe she was not a minor when it happened.
The trial is one of the last cases Cosby faces after a Pennsylvania appeals court threw out his criminal sexual assault conviction and freed him from prison 11 months ago. Several other lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct were settled by his insurer against his will.
Cosby will not testify after the judge ruled that he could assert his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. And he has no plans to leave his Pennsylvania home to attend the trial.
Huth says she suffered ‘psychological damage and mental anguish’ as a result of the alleged assault.
She is one of the dozens of women who have said they suffered sexual assault at Cosby’s hands.
Huth claims she met Cosby on the set for the movie ‘Let’s Do It Again’ in San Marino, California, and days later was invited to his tennis club, along with her friend Donna Samuelson.
Cosby’s lawyers have acknowledged that he took Huth (above, right) to the Playboy Mansion, as a photo from the visit shows, but say they believe she was not a minor when it happened
Cosby has settled many of the legal claims made against him by dozens of women over the years
There, she says, he gave her alcohol and took her and her friend to the Playboy Mansion, where he forced her to perform a sex act.
The original complaint in the case accuses Cosby of ‘putting his hand down [Huth’s] pants, and then taking her hand in his hand and performing a sex act on himself without consent.’
According to court documents, Huth alleges that Cosby told her and her friend to say that they were 19 if asked by staff at the mansion.
Cosby has denied her version of events. His defense team jumped upon the fact that Huth’s original version of events said that the assault occurred in 1974.
According to court documents, Huth alleges that Cosby told her and her friend to say that they were 19 if asked by staff at the mansion
Later, Huth said it occurred in 1975.
The judge in the case allowed Cosby’s legal team to depose Huth and Samuelson for a second time on May 23.
Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Cosby, has accused Huth of ‘inconsistent statements since the inception of filing this civil suit against Mr. Cosby.’
The state of California passed a new law in 2020 that extended the statute of limitations in civil court for victims of sexual assault.
This lawsuit is one of the last remaining open suits against Cosby. The star of ‘The Cosby Show’ has settled many of the claims against him.
Victoria Valentino, who claims that Cosby raped her in 1969, said of Huth’s lawsuit: ‘I think that Judy’s trial may be our last stand for justice and seeing accountability come to fruition in our stand against Bill Cosby,’ The New York Times reported.
This lawsuit is one of the last remaining open suits against Cosby. The star of ‘The Cosby Show’ has settled many of the claims against him
Cosby team has described a feeling of ambush around Huth changing the date in her story. They say that their defense depended upon establishing Cosby’s whereabouts in 1974, around the time when Huth said that she met Cosby, not 1975.
Huth and her friend do not appear in the Playboy Mansion’s logs in 1974, according to The New York Times.
While the judge in the lawsuit has ordered Playboy to produce lists of employees from that time period in order to see if any could back up either side’s contentions. The New York Post reports that Playboy has complied with the judge’s orders.
The comedian’s team says that Cosby doesn’t deny having met Huth, there is photo evidence showing the two together. They maintain that Cosby didn’t know that she was underage.
Cosby was frequent reveler at the Playboy Mansion throughout his career
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was deposed in Huth’s lawsuit back in 2016. Hefner died the following year at 91
Valentino plans to attend court for Huth’s lawsuit, according to NBC News.
Huth’s case was originally filed in 2014, but had been on hold while Cosby faced aggravated indecent assault charges against Andrea Constand in Pennsylvania.
At that time, Huth also made a criminal complaint against Cosby but was told that criminal the statute of limitations had expired.
Cosby was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand 17 years ago in Pennsylvania, but freed from his prison sentence after the state’s supreme court ruled he had been denied a fair trial.
His release from prison, he had served more than two years of his three-to-10 year sentence, infuriated many advocates of the #MeToo movement.
His conviction was the first sexual assault guilty verdict against a celebrity since the advent of the worldwide reckoning against sexual violence and abuse of power.
But the court did not exonerate him, rather it overturned the conviction on a technicality.
Judges wrote that a non-prosecution agreement between a former district attorney and Cosby over evidence he gave in a different civil case meant the actor shouldn’t have been criminally charged in the first place.
Women who have claimed sexual assault by Bill Cosby
Cosby, 80, has been accused of drugging and raping over 40 women. These are some of the victims who have publicly come forward with sexuala ssault allegations against the disgraced comedian.
JANICE BAKER-KINNEY
Kinney said she was 24 in May 1982 when she and a friend met Cosby at the casino where she worked in Reno, Nevada.
She said the three of them went back to Cosby’s apartment, where he gave her some pills.
Baker-Kinney willingly took two pills and said she began to get blurry vision while playing backgammon with Cosby.
Hours later, she claims, she woke up naked in bed with the comedian – and he told her to keep their encounter to themselves.
‘I was mortified at what had happened,’ said Kinney back in 2015 when she went public with her allegations at a press conference.
‘All this time, and for many, many years, I felt that this was my fault.’
Cosby’s lawyers argued that she only met Cosby once, ‘voluntarily’ took quaaludes and apologized for passing out.
JANICE DICKINSON
The supermodel claims that Cosby sexually assaulted her in 1982 after giving her an unknown pill.
Dickinson said in that 2014 interview that Cosby invited her to dinner to discuss a role on The Cosby Show and at one point offered her a glass of wine and a pill.
‘The next morning I woke up, and I wasn’t wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,’ she told Entertainment Tonight.
‘I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.’
Dickinson said her last memory of the night was of Cosby taking off his robe and climbing on top of her, and that the next morning she remembers ‘a lot of pain.’
The supermodel claimed the incident occurred in Lake Tahoe, California in 1982.
In her memoir, Dickinson detailed some of her evening in Lake Tahoe with Cosby but told a very different story.
She said she was drinking with Cosby at dinner and after being invited back to his room told him she was tired, at which point he slammed his door in her face.
Legal claims made by Cosby and his team may be why she decided not to print her current version of the story.
She said back in 2014 that she came forward because she believes the other victims who have spoken publicly, and that it is the ‘right thing to do.’
As for what she would say to Cosby if she saw him, Dickinson did not mince words.
‘How dare you,’ she said.
‘Go f*ck yourself. How dare you take advantage of me. And I hope you rot.’
CHELAN LASHA
Lasha said in a 2014 press conference that Cosby attacked her when she was just 17 in 1986 when she was an aspiring model.
She said her stepmother had sent pictures of her to the star and he called her at home in Las Vegas, inviting her to the Hilton Las Vegas, where he was performing and she had a job.
She then went up to Elvis Presley suite to meet him and after telling him she had a cold, he gave her a blue pill, which he said was an antihistimine, with a double shot of Amaretto.
She said: ‘He was rubbing my neck and saying that he might have to have someone come in and give me stress therapy.’
She claimed he told her to change into a Hilton bathrobe and wet her hair to see the modelling scout.
Someone did briefly come up to the room, pertaining to be from the Ford Modelling Agency -telling her to she needed to lose 10 pounds – and taking some pictures.
Then, Chelan said, Cosby walked her to the bedroom and gave her another shot of Amaretto, which he claimed would help her cold.
‘I laid down,’ she said: ‘He laid down next to me on the bed and began pinching my left nipple and humping my leg while he was grunting.
‘I could not open my eyes. I couldn’t move or say anything. I felt something warm on my legs. Then I blacked out.
‘Thirteen to sixteen hours later I woke up by hearing Mr Cosby clapping his hands and saying ‘Daddy says wake up’. He gave me $1500. He said the money was to buy something nice for me and my grandmother and he also invited me to go to the Temptations show with my grandmother.
‘My grandmother went but I did not go because I was too sick. Then he invited us to his show. My grandmother really want to go. I did not, but I went with her and heckled him. As a result, I was fired my from job.’
LISA-LOTTE LUBLIN
Lublin said she met Cosby in 1989 at a hotel in Las Vegas and that he asked her to perform an improvisation so that he could evaluate her acting.
According to the ex-model, she and Cosby were in the Elvis Suite at the Hilton Hotel when he offered her two drinks and proceeded to pet her hair.
A short time later she passed out, but she remembered the color of the walls in the room and a flood of bright light she said in a 2015 press conference.
She said that she believes she was sexually assaulted by Cosby while passed out in the hotel.
Prior to this, she and her mother had gone for a run with the comedian.
The defense argued that Lublin assumes she is a victim based on other media accounts but can only remember Cosby stroking her hair.
HEIDI THOMAS
In 1984, Heidi Thomas, nee Johnson, was a 24-year-old model from Denver, Colorado, who was dreaming of a career in acting.
Thomas was being represented by the city’s top modelling agency, JF Images, but by 1984 she was questioning whether or not she wanted to stay in the business.
Then one day in the spring of 1984, she got a call from an agent who told her that a famous entertainer was searching for young talent to mentor.
Thomas said that Annie Maloney, of JF Images, instructed her to travel to Reno, Nevada, where she was supposed to meet with Bill Cosby, who allegedly had expressed interest in becoming her acting coach.Cosby greeted Thomas at the entrance and ushered her inside, according to the woman.
The aspiring actress began by performing a monologue for Cosby, who then asked her to do a cold read of a person who was intoxicated.
Thomas said Cosby was not impressed because to his mind, she was not convincing as a drunk.
She recalled that Cosby wanted her to relax, so he poured her a glass of Chablis.
The married music teacher said that her memory of the next several hours is very hazy, but when she woke up later that night, she found herself in bed next to a naked Bill Cosby who was ‘forcing himself’ in her mouth.
According to the woman, the married comedian then got on top of her and said to her: ‘I’m your friend… your friend is gonna [ejaculate] again,’ according to the 54-year-old mother of three.
Thomas said she was confused as to what happened and eventually stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her, but she later apologized to Cosby for being rude.
She spent three more days with Cosby and said they were all hazy and a blur.
The defense argued she has given three versions of her story.
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